Startup Palantir Denies Its 'Prism' Software Is The NSA's 'PRISM' Surveillance System

The data analysis firm Palantir wants to make one thing clear: There's more than one piece of software in the world called "Prism," and Palantir's "Prism" product is definitely not the National Security Agency's massive surveillance system known as "PRISM."

But in a phone call Friday, a Palantir staffer who asked not to be named told me that Palantir has nothing to do with the NSA's PRISM program, and that its "Prism" product is actually financial analysis software not intended for government. "It's a name collision," she said. "We had no knowledge of this PRISM program before the story broke, and we don't have anything to do with it. The Prism product, posted on a public wiki, was built for our finance program, and it has nothing to do with government."

Palantir's legal counsel Matt Long followed up with an official statement:

Palantir's Prism platform is completely unrelated to any US government program of the same name. Prism is Palantir's name for a data integration technology used in the Palantir Metropolis platform (formerly branded as Palantir Finance). This software has been licensed to banks and hedge funds for quantitative analysis and research.

Prism is a software component that lets you quickly integrate external databases into Palantir. Specifically, it lets you build high-performance Data Engine based providers without writing any code. Instead, you define simple configuration files and then Palantir automatically constructs the data provider and database code for you.

Palantir isn't the first to deny its involvement in the NSA's spying scheme, which according to the Post extracted files directly from nine Internet companies over six years. Within hours of the story breaking, practically every tech company named in the story had denied their involvement and in some cases even denied knowing what PRISM was.

The Palantir staffer I spoke with wouldn't comment on the startup's customers, but it's no secret that the company does work with intelligence agencies. A Wall Street Journalprofile of the firm in 2009 said that the NSA was "eyeing" the company. It's received investment from the CIA venture capital arm known as In-Q-Tel, as well as billionaire Peter Thiel. The company's software was initially developed from fraud detection techniques implemented by PayPal, which Thiel co-founded.

"The right to free speech and the right to privacy are critical to a flourishing democracy," Palantir chief executive Alex Karp wrote in a statement at the time. "From its inception, Palantir Technologies has supported these ideals and demonstrated a commitment to building software that protects privacy and civil liberties."